Apr. 13, 2013

The purchase of $1.7 million in videoconferencing equipment and 'blackout' window blinds in one conference room are examples of the wasteful spending by former state State Superintdent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett according to new superintendent Glenda Ritz's staff. / Matt Kryger / The Star

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Videoconferencing monitors are being used as desk computer monitors. / Matt Kryger / The Star

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The three window blinds, at nearly $1,500 each, are about all the Indiana Department of Education has to show for the $1.7 million it has shelled out for some of the most high-tech video conferencing equipment available.

Well, the blinds actually aren’t all. There also are two $6,500 high-definition desktop videoconferencing units, which, as of last week, didn’t mesh with the department’s broader telecommunications system and, so, were being used as what a department employee called “a very expensive computer monitor.”

The rest of the $1.7 million worth of equipment hasn’t been delivered, largely because the new education superintendent’s team says it can’t figure out why the former superintendent’s administration bought it.

“It’s frustrating,” said David Galvin, a top aide to first-year Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz. “It’s just frustrating because it seems there wasn’t a lot of thought put into the purchase. A lot of tax dollars were spent on something that we don’t know how to use, and we don’t even know if it’s needed.”

The purchase was finalized last summer, about three months before former Superintendent Tony Bennett lost his re-election bid. A three-page sales agreement includes dozens of pieces of high-tech equipment, software and services sold by California-based Cisco Systems, which at the time of the purchase employed Bennett’s former chief of staff.

The idea behind the spending, Bennett’s team told me, was to better connect the Department of Education with educators from across the state, and to make possible meetings on equipment billed by Cisco as a “dynamic way for dispersed teams to connect .”

Ritz’s team, however, says the purchase was extravagant and has provided them with high-tech headaches. They say the department doesn’t currently have the bandwidth to host the equipment and that its information technology workers have struggled to determine how to integrate the new equipment with existing hardware. As such, most of the new technology remains in a Cisco warehouse — long after Hoosier taxpayers paid for it.

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And while the TelePresence equipment is impressive, it was bought without public attention during a period of intense budget tightening in Indiana schools and in an era of deep concern about government spending. For instance, Republican legislators such as House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, criticized Ritz and her team for spending $86,000 to renovate Department of Education offices shortly after she took office in January.

To put things in perspective: The $1.7 million price tag could have paid the salaries and benefits of every teacher — 24 in all — at Fishers Elementary School in Hamilton County for the current school year.

Included in last summer’s purchase is an $80,000 package of touch-screen teleconferencing units, complete with “vivid 1080p video and superior audio,” that the sales agreement says was intended for Bennett’s Statehouse office. Bennett’s administration also purchased videoconferencing units for the nine Education Service Centers spread throughout the state and, to back up the hardware, signed off on $260,000 worth of installation and training.

Shipping, which for the most part has yet to occur, cost Indiana taxpayers nearly $6,000.

The three pitch-black blinds weren’t part of the original purchase; they cost an extra $4,500 collectively and cover a trio of modest-sized windows in the Education Department’s fifth-floor Downtown office. Custom-made, the blinds are needed to accommodate the Cisco TelePresence TX 9000, a video conferencing system made up of three 65-inch screens that works properly only when all natural light is blocked out. The three-screen system cost the state $134,550 — or, put another way, $11,000 more than the median value of a home in Indiana.

“This has put us between a rock and a hard place,” Galvin said, noting that it is too late to cancel the order but that using the equipment will cost taxpayers another $152,000 in annual software licensing fees. “Really, we’d prefer to not even have this stuff.”

Adding to the political drama, Bennett’s office signed the contract to buy the equipment about 18 months after his one-time chief of staff, Todd Huston, took a job as an education consultant and business development manager at Cisco. Huston, now a state lawmaker representing a Fishers-based district, continued to serve as a close political and policy adviser to Bennett while working for Cisco. In a recent interview, he said he acted as a facilitator between Cisco and Bennett’s office during the deal but added that he earned no commission from it.

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Huston defended the deal, saying it would ultimately help with professional development and allow what are essentially face-to-face meetings that would not require educators and others to drive to Indianapolis from far-flung regions of the state. Those individuals, Huston said, could travel to one of the nine regional service centers for a teleconference if the equipment is finally installed. He said the early installation hiccups will be worked out and added that the rumblings coming from the Ritz administration are a signal that “they don’t understand their job.”

“This was intended to help the department be more service-oriented,” Huston said. “This was meant to create a more collaborative effort between the state and schools. ... This is what business has done for a long time.”

Reached in Florida, where he is now that state’s education commissioner, Bennett told me that the new technology would connect educators in a 21st century way, and he criticized Ritz for not retaining workers from his administration that he said could have had the new equipment up and running . He said the TelePresence technology is “very interactive ” and called it a “very powerful tool” that could save money by reducing travel expenses.

“If we expect schools and districts to use technology and innovation, then I believe the Department of Education should be a leader in that,” he said. Pointing to Ritz’s longtime career as a media specialist in Washington Township Schools, he added: “I’m a little shocked that a person whose background was as a media specialist doesn’t have an understanding of how this very powerful technological tool can improve communication between the department and schools.”

But in Ritz’s office, Galvin and others say they’ve been left with a bunch of costly toys at a time when they’d rather deal with education policy and the organization of an office that was depleted of staff when Bennett left. Video-based meetings are great, staffers said, but Skype and other websites offer the service for free.

So what happens now?

Ritz’s office is looking at a range of options, including renting the equipment to others or seeing if other state agencies want to share in its cost and benefits. In the conference room with the expensive blinds, workers have installed wiring and other hardware to serve the three-screen TX 9000. Employees in the service centers are waiting for the new technology they started hearing about just before Bennett’s surprising loss in November. Galvin, Ritz’s aide, said conversations with Cisco continue.

“It’s a shame,” he said. “There’s so much money involved, so much taxpayer money, and there doesn’t seem to have been a clear plan.”

Making matters worse is the clear distaste that the Bennett and Ritz teams have for each other, and the lack of communication between them. It has turned what was a questionable purchase into one that has yet to benefit one Indiana student or one Indiana educator.

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